In today’s society, more and more people are using credit cards than ever before to make purchases. Sometimes these purchases take place in stores, while other times they take place on line. No matter where a purchase is being made with a credit card, though, businesses are finding that they need to keep up with quality customer service in order to best cater to credit card users. Some ways that businesses are ensuring that their customers can confidently make purchases with the credit cards is that they’re investing more in providing secure payment options, like secure payment processing and top of the line, secure payment systems. Many also offer chargeback protection and reliable customer service options, like a payment processing consultant.

As mentioned above, people are making purchases with credit cards more frequently than ever before. Why? Because it’s easy and more convenient, especially when shopping online. Online shopping is really becoming the norm for many consumers because it’s convenient and easy to make bulk purchases. Online shopping allows consumers to shop from the comfort of their homes and it allows them to more quickly compare products at different stores rather than hopping in a car and wasting time comparing products in brick and mortar stores.

According to a 2014 survey by MineWhat, consumers typically visit 3 online stores before making a purchase. This can be done in ten minutes or less with a few clicks of a mouse. It’s all about convenience. In terms of buying in bulk, online shopping is great because many online stores offer incentives when placing bulk orders. And online shopping isn’t just booming in the U.S., it’s growing in popularity around the globe. For example, e-commerce sales around the globe generates an estimated $931,490 every 30 seconds from desktop sales, and another $269,683 from mobile devices, like phones and tablets.

However, shopping online comes with it’s share of dangers, primarily credit card fraud and identity theft. Credit card fraud is an unfortunate side effect of online shopping and making purchases with a credit card. In 2014 alone, world wide fraud losses totalled $16.31 billion. That number is projected to increase to $35.45 billion by 2020! Just in the U.S., credit card fraud costs upwards of $8 billion each year. Data breaches are also becoming more common, and not only result in compromised consumer credit cards, but also private information, like social security numbers. This means that data breaches are contributing to more cases of identity theft. In 2014, 54% of data breaches were linked to identity theft. There were also an estimated 1,540 data breaches around the world in 2014 that resulted in the compromise of over one billion data records!

So while online shopping and credit card usage are becoming more and more popular among consumers looking for convenience, there are certain risks attached. It’s up to the consumer to do their research and make sure they’re shopping at secure, reputable businesses.